Search Results for 'Dun Laoghaire'

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

My mother, who religiously listened to the Gay Byrne Show, operated a kind of censorship. There were certain topics she did not want me to hear. For two hours, five days a week, she would shut the kitchen door, and listen to Gay with the volume turned down. On one occasion I came into the room. She asked: “What do you want?” Nobody needs an excuse to go into one’s kitchen, so I’d rather indignantly replied: “Nothin’.” “Well,” she said, “I’m busy.” And that meant scram.

On Sunday evening March 25 1866, the two children of the schoolmaster Mr St George, were playing near the fire together in the Mission School (now Scoil Fhursa), when suddenly there was an explosion. The elder child burnt his hand. His injuries put him into a ‘very precarious position’. I am not sure how serious that was, but the story took an insidious turn when it was given out that ‘some malicious person climbed on the roof, and threw a packet of gunpowder down the chimney.’